


Small Repairs

by brightephemera



Category: Farscape
Genre: F/M, Friendship, Gen, Mourning, brief ugly disease, former Crichton/Aeryn, one episode
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-28
Updated: 2020-07-28
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:13:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25570381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brightephemera/pseuds/brightephemera
Summary: An episode in which the crew supplies at a refinery planet with a serious local problem, and John and Aeryn cope with the death of the other...you know. Chiana has a plan to help.
Relationships: Chiana & Moya Crew
Comments: 2





	Small Repairs

**Author's Note:**

> This is slightly rearranged from Fractures. Specifically: The Choice (Aeryn on the mystics' world remembering Crichton) => Fractures when Talyn and Moya are reunited => Small Repairs => Fractures when the damaged transport pod (carrying the Scarran, Nebari, Peacekeeper tech, and Hynerian) comes on board.

Jool and Crichton watched Moya’s status at the controls. Crichton was thinking about Ghostbusters packs tuned for energy beings. It'd make the next crisis so much easier. Jool was still muttering under her new eyepatch, but her good eye stayed trained on the readings. Moya was tired, as usual, undersupplied, as usual, but she was in the equilibrium that given the circumstances was as good as it gets.

Crichton looked over. Jool’s eye patch stood out, accusing ,though Crichton hadn’t been involved in the particular fight where she’d earned it. “That bothering you much, princess?”

She scowled. “Not as much as this new plan we have.”

“I don’t make the rules of the universe, I just know enough of them to get us in trouble. We go in there, we stop Scorpy’s wormhole party…you can go anywhere you want.”

“Different plan. I leave, you die at Scorpius’ wormhole party, I can go anywhere I want.”

“That’s a wild imagination you’ve got there, sister. I’m sorry, but there’s no time.”

She turned her head, orange ringlets bouncing. “And you can’t let me out knowing what I know.”

Well. She wasn’t wrong. “Steady as she goes, Pilot.”

“I still don’t understand what that means,” Pilot said pettishly. “However, you will have stability during the progress of our voyage.”

“That’s all I’m after.”

Chiana bounded in like a starburst. “Crichton! We need to stop!”

“Not you, too, Pip.” Had everyone forgotten yesterday’s hell and tomorrow’s bad ideas? The sheer normality of these two being discontented chafed, like a raspberry seed between his teeth.

“At a commerce planet,” clarified Chiana. “There has to be one on the way.”

“A commerce planet?”

“A commerce planet. Anyplace with a decent food market will do.”

“Pip, you realize we’re….”

“Going to take on the Peacekeeper war machine with nothing but the mivonks fate gave ya. I know that. I just thought we could be well fed.”

Honestly, it might be the least bad suggestion Chiana had had all week. “Pilot, is there a place we can stop for supplies? I don’t mind going in with a full stomach.”

“There is a small planet not far off our course, hosting a refinery. It may be our best option.”

D’Argo met them on the bridge. “No.”

Chiana glared. “Come on, D’Argo, I can’t die on crackers and hope. That’s barely enough for breakfast.”

“Or a snack. Fine. But I will go with you.”

Jool shook her head wildly and started gesturing. “Me too!”

“So you can bounce again? I don’t think so,” said Chiana.

“Bounce to where?” said D’Argo. “Let’s give Moya some quiet.”

*

D’Argo went by way of Crais’s quarters. “Are you interested in a stop?” he said, not sure how to treat Talyn’s returning father figure.

Crais looked up from his reading. “No. Thank you.”

“You’ve all really been missing your own quarters.” And not, you know, getting out to see anyone.

Crais smiled bleakly. “There is more space on Moya,” he said. “Space to be alone.”

“But you come back and he’s still here.”

Crais tensed. “I am aware.”

“His double died. Aeryn won't talk to him. Is that revenge enough for you?”

“I take no pleasure in it.”

“Then perhaps we can all live together again.” D’Argo turned away, unconvinced, but what could you do with a man like Crais? Hold out for something better. It wasn’t a great explanation but it was better than nothing.

*

It had been weeks. The requirement knocked around Aeryn’s chest and prowled through her belly. She required Crichton. She required Crichton and he was gone. She didn't pretend to understand. She had a requirement and she could not try to meet it again.

John Crichton flashed through her mind, the one here, the one bubbling with an attempt to look casual (fake) and happy (real). Wouldn't he love to step in? As if she could do that again. As if she could watch him die. And he would, with his half-mad enthusiasm in the face of danger and his affinity for crazy plans, as if she could permit herself to watch that again.

She could live with herself not permitting that requirement again.

John-who-lived was kind, and he liked her well enough. It was better than most possible reactions to their new terms. She had let herself go, out there on Talyn under other stars. This Crichton, his was the world in which she had never been that vulnerable. She could never explain how she was grateful for that.

She left her strangely alien-feeling quarters and went out to find something to fix.

*

The little red planet’s sole settlement was a set of concentric circles flanked by long white rectangles, each a metra or more long. They seemed to seethe as D’Argo took the transport pod in for a landing.

People swarmed the pod as soon as they touched down. Chiana looked to her pulse pistol. Then to Jool’s pulse pistol. Jool set her jaw and nodded smartly.

D’Argo kicked the door release and let his Qualta blade rest easy in his hands. Chiana stared from behind him.

The crowd was of a dozen species, maybe more. They all wore ragged red hooded robes stained white at the hems. Some of them wore necklaces and forehead thingies of glossy white metal. There was something…wrong, at their edges. Like their skin hung too loose or had peeled partly off.

Chiana kind of expected them to pillage the entire pod, but they formed a circle out of swinging range and sent forward one person, a man with wispy yellow hair and pale scaly skin. He raised toward D’Argo an ivory box no bigger than his head. “Contact,” he said in a thick accent.

“I don’t understand,” said D’Argo.

“Gloves,” said the man. “For contact.”

“You’re mobbing our ship to deliver protective equipment?” said Jool. “How refreshing.”

“Don’t touch our skin,” said a woman. She was wearing thin black gloves herself.

D’Argo opened the box. Three pairs of blue gloves had been thrown in, and D’Argo distributed them.

“What is this?” said Jool.

The scaly man seemed to be the spokesman. “It is the vaNeenan. It is a disease of wasting flesh. Objects we handle are safe, but skin to skin....”

This made no sense. The refinery fields outside must be enough to support a comfortable life. “Don't you have doctors?”

The entire crowd looked down. “We had Doctor Priam,” Lathrop said, clearly pained.

“Is it fatal?” said D’Argo, sounding ready to duel it himself.

“Inevitably, honored guest.”

Jool set her hands on her hips. “Do you have a hospital? If I look this over, will you get me off this planet?”

“Maybe we can assist,” said Lathrop. “Come with me. I will show you our supplies.”

*

Crais felt Talyn humming contentedly in his mind. The gunship had missed his mother. Maybe they all had.

He got his laundry out without effort and in one piece. Moya, who controlled the facility, had warmed to him since he took his role with Talyn. He returned to his quarters and folded with habitual precision. It was easier not to think, when he had something to fold. Moya was wrong now, and though the wrongness was not his fault, he had brought it here. It would take time for matters to settle. Even if the conclusions were obvious.

“Crais, control your adolescent!”

It was Rygel's voice over the comms. Crais stopped his study of a recently pilfered Peacekeeper newsscan. Even public publications were telling if you knew where to look. And he sensed that they needed telling. “What are you talking about?”

“My things are in my quarters on Talyn and he won't let me on to retrieve them!”

“Maybe he will take the chance to return all those things to their rightful owners.”

“He's the thief here! Make him open that door!”

Aeryn walked by. Crais shot to his feet. “Aeryn.”

She turned around. In Moya’s familiar light, did she seem paler? More tired? Less patient.

“I pray that your old home gives you some solace,” he said awkwardly.

“Crais!” roared Rygel.

“Rygel,” prompted Aeryn, tipping her head meaningfully.

“Aeryn,” insisted Crais.

She scowled. “Well, now that the roll call is done, I should be off.”

“I don't hold a grudge,” rushed Crais. Her outburst on the mystics’ planet had been embarrassing as she crawled onto him in a public hallway, mocking, demanding…but they could put it behind them.

“No grudge?” Aeryn smiled. “Bialar Crais, you are what Crichton would call twenty grudges stacked in a turnchcoat...” and her gaze failed. “Never mind.”

“If my foodstuffs go bad I’ll be replacing them out of your share!” howled Rygel. Crais and Aeryn turned away at the same time, each to their respective thoughts.

*

Crichton felt Aeryn like a compass feels north. Compass pointing meant nothing in deep space, but there it was. She kept to herself, doing God knows what in her quarters or re-bonding with Pilot. Part of him wanted to accidentally run into her in the halls every five minutes. He knew that would destroy whatever it was they had left.

He looked up and he was at sea. The ocean waves were big and choppy, the sky low and slate-colored. The boat was a sailing ship, more than big enough for him, and he was wearing a half-soaked white sailor’s uniform.

At least the man beside him was, too.

There was a little panel in the side that had been lowered. There was a black casket lying between Crichton and that wave-lapped edge.

“Don’t,” said Crichton. “Don’t do this.”

Harvey struck a casual pose. “You're not the only person affected, John.”

“You're not a person.” It started raining, thudding around John’s white brimmed hat and slicking down the ribbon at his neck. “The body was already gone when they got back.” That felt wrong. “Could you tell? When he died?”

“I have no more link to that me than you do to your you.”

“He left me with a job to do. Middle management at its best. We always were afraid we’d end up behind a desk, giving the assignments.” He stared at the casket. “Behind some big block of wood, anyway.”

“And are you committed to that job? Be careful, John. You're already down one man. Or, I flatter myself, two.”

“I don't pick the course. I just fly it.”

“You give yourself too little credit. The exploit you are contemplating will require all the ingenuity and daring you can provide.”

“Stop Scorpy. Destroy the wormhole data.” Restless, he turned around and backed against the gunwale, spreading his arms to either side to grip the edges in a slouching crucifix. “Damn. You know, for two minutes there I didn't think about Aeryn?” Didn’t boats need compasses?

“Is there a procedure for you at such a time? Some music?”

“Taps? I wasn't a soldier. Bruce Springsteen, maybe.”

“And then…do you really bury these matters at sea?”

“Sure. You don't in space?”

“There is such a thing as cremation for metallorganic resource reclamation.”

Crichton stared. He shook his head. “Scorpy, you are something else.” And then, drawn, his gaze went back to the casket.

“If you're thinking of accumulating personal demons, I warn you, I'm a jealous man.” Harvey stepped forward and kicked the casket toward the edge.

“What are you doing?” Without thinking Crichton threw himself over the casket. But it slipped away, and he hit the deck. “I wasn’t _going_ to pull a Psycho with my own body but I can improvise with the next guy to piss me off!”

The compass thrummed. He was back on Moya, the body was gone, and his navigation was frelled again.

*

The scaled man was named Lathrop, and he brought the party through curve after curve of building until they reached a domed structure. It had a weird sound to it as Chiana’s soft boots brushed the floor. She didn’t like it at all.

“Our hospital,” he said. “It is more than we can use, given our lack of tools against the vaNeenan. We have a research laboratory, though no doctor in this sector would come among us to use it.”

“It was well funded,” Jool said, looking around. “But poorly staffed?”

“Priam tried to save us when no one else will,” Lathrop chided. Pride. He had pride in this little dren-hole.

Jool gave the messy workbench a professional once-over. Chiana realized with a start that she was comfortable here. She was never comfortable on Moya. “Do you have samples of diseased flesh?”

“Yes, yes,” said Lathrop, and opened a freeze chamber. There were scraps of pale-flesh tone between slides.

“Good. And the doctor’s notes?”

Lathrop’s scales shimmered on his forehead and cheekbones. He pointed at a cabinet in the corner. “It is locked. Inner braces on a biometric lock, we cannot force it without destroying the contents.”

Jool rolled her head in a luxurious stretch. She grinned “Cover your ears.”

And she screamed. It shredded nerves. It battered ears. And it warped metal. Chiana, for one, hated all three.

“You _live_ with her?” murmured Lathrop.

"I...eard...that!" shrieked Jool.

“Pull,” D’Argo said urgently. Lathrop did, and the drawer sprang open.

“Good. Let me study this.” She looked around. “Microscope,” she murmured, turning one on before returning to the reading. “Good. Give me an arn.”

“Friends,” said the assistant, “we can feed you.”

D’Argo looked at Chiana. Chiana looked at D’Argo.

“I’m game if you are,” she said.

*

Aeryn was floating on a sea she had never seen. To have, and have not. To die, yet remain. Crichton—the before-Crichton—had told her about ghosts. Restless spirits who haunted, oh, anyone. People who had wronged them. People who had let them die for a stupid fight on a forsaken planet. Was that supposed to be her lesson on the mystics’ planet? Were her visions, not temptations to recover him, but echoes to punish her?

She reached Pilot’s room. “Did you have a DRD you wanted me to look at?”

“Yes.” Pilot pointed at the stricken machine on the walkway. “I’m not sure why it has stopped communicating.”

“I see.” Aeryn got to work in silence. Pilot gave her that.

Sentiment. She couldn't afford to give away any more, and she could barely stand the stuff she had internalized. Maybe it was time to look forward. Battle with the Peacekeepers. No one could do that better than the woman who had been them. Who had learned that, after all, emotional ties could only lead to disaster. She could fight with a clear head and a clear conscience. That was all that mattered.

Silence. Pilot gave her that. It wasn’t a friendship she should cultivate, but she was too weak to push it away. Pilot asked nothing of her. She worked until the DRD was fixed, then left, and was not followed.

*

Jool kept her study going. If the rest of the crew left forever, well, she would get off this rock and go somewhere else. And if they came back for her…well, that was better than being alone.

“This is nasty,” said Jool to the anxious, hovering Lathrop. “You’re…well, you’re dissolving. Wait. Wait wait wait.” She stared at her gloved hands. “I can fix this. There is something in this blighted sector I can fix! You need tarorase to enable the re-bonding.”

Lathrop swallowed. “Tarorase, what is tarorase?”

“Your new best friend. It's common enough in the near uncharted territories. Use that and your doctor's notes, you can reverse the entire effect.”

“Truly?” His eyes were hollow and round. “A cure? For all of us?”

“I don’t see why not. Now, then. How soon can a ship come here? And leave?”

D’Argo and Chiana rumbled in. They didn’t bother with pleasantries.

Lathrop was looking thoughtful. “How…soon? We are a very minor refinery. It will be half a cycle before our supply.”

“But we supply many things,” an assistant said eagerly.

“Half a cycle in quarantine?”

“With fine food.”

“Really?” said Chiana. She was bizarrely focused today. “Because we can pay.”

“No payment for our friend,” said Lathrop. “Our stores are open to you. We have a great variety. The supply ships are generous.”

“Half a cycle….” said Jool. “Half a cycle? I…I’d take my chances on Moya. After all, you’re not driving her straight into the command carrier.” Her eyes narrowed. “Are you?”

“We would not ask her that,” said D’Argo.

“Did you say fine food?” said Chiana.

“Please, come with us!” Lathrop’s forehead and cheeks shimmered again. He reached out one gloved hand and started to shepherd them, looking even happier than before.

*

Crichton dug around in the workshop until he found a little clamshell recorder/player. He took it to his quarters and propped it up on the bed. He would explode if he didn’t do this.

“Dad? It's been a while. I just thought you oughta know, and you oughta hear it from me. I don't know how to say this. Dad, did you know you lost a son? I wasn't even there, I...I would probably have died too.

“'S weird to think my spare is gone.

“Aeryn's taking it hard. Flattering, right? I know he loved her. Like nothing he'd ever known, like nothing he'll ever understand. Don't ask me how I know that.

“That’s the worst of it, but there’s more. I have to face the Peacekeepers again.” He thought. “We always said, space travel. All those risks? It's an idea worth dying for. Now I'm dying to stop an idea. Well, no. I'm dying to stop the bad guys from using it. And that was worth dying for, too. He was brave, Dad. I'm not just patting myself on the back, there's—there’s no back to pat. Because he was brave. How do you live up to that?

“Now it's just me. The runner-up. Rygel is convinced I was split up lengthwise and half of me was really with half of him. He keeps trying to prove this with leading questions but I've got nothing. I would remember more, if I'd been halfway there.” He thought about it, wishing he could have. Then, self-conscious, he stirred. “I always think there's someone who would listen to these stupid things.”

He walked into the hallway and forgot why. The little clamshell in his hand was warm and pointless. He picked a good distance, sighted, and threw the clamshell sidehand, giving it a spin with his index finger. It skimmed and bounced, describing a line of contact points before it vanished around the curve.

“Just like Lake Okeechobee,” he muttered, but no one here would remember.

*

It was hard to relax on the ship between the time Chiana left and the time she came back with a double (one of them D’Argo’s) armload of supplies, and then between that and her inviting Moya and Talyn crews alike into the mess.

Chiana swept a hand toward the spread. “Here it is. A little something for everyone.” She’d done it before and she could do it again: the entire dining room was arranged as a wavy line of big round dishes heaped with food and chairs scattered wherever around them. Chiana ushered the crew in. “Let’s see if I haven’t gotten even better this time.”

She pointed Crichton at a little “U” of the table line. There was a bright yellow shallow sheet on the table. “I heard you talk about cheese bits all the time,” she said.

“Grits. Cheesy grits.” He stared, unbelieving.

“Bet you’ll think mine was better.”

Aeryn looked at Crichton. No, she looked through Crichton. The grits must remind her of a conversation that he, personally, had not been around for. Great. Now the food was giving Aeryn flashbacks of the copy who had been Crichton, and who had died.

Aeryn took the grits, and she didn’t look at Crichton when she ate them. Crichton tried a spoonful and it wasn’t the same. Still, when Chiana checked up on him, he scooped out a little bowl’s worth. Any nonzero amount of grits might upset someone in the room and he was starting to resent it.

“Hm, and what did you make for me?” said Rygel. He floated over the tables, benevolently surveying the feast from above.

“Well, I figured you would just sample everyone else’s stuff, so why worry about you specifically? Cheesy grits going begging.”

“Human food? My stomachs were not designed for…what that is.”

Crichton roused himself. “Neither was mine, Buckwheat, don’t hold it against ‘em.”

Crais was unloading red cubes one at a time from plate to plate. He took one up with a fork and eyed Chiana. “Doryb cubes? How did you get the recipe?”

“Hey. Sheer number of prison hours we have racked up on this Peacekeeper ship, you don’t think one of us snagged the makings of the officers’ favorite grub?”

“It—mh.” Crais bit down, tensed, and squeezed his eyes shut. After a moment of profound effort he unscrewed his face. “I see,” he said weakly.

“What, you didn’t think I was going to make something you like?” Chiana grinned. “Try some of the savrik, it should get the taste out.”

Jool was taking deep spoonfuls of something green and full of floating stuff. “If you think this makes me want to stay,” she warned sharply.

“You did help all those people.” Chiana gave that some thought, then reached for Jool’s spoon. “Don't scoop out the bottom of that! I'll get you something better.”

D’Argo was digging into a plate of something vaguely tubular, having dispensed with the nonsense of a smaller plate to transfer food onto. “Chiana, this is amazing!”

“Funny what you learn around a guy who eats ten fobatts a day.”

D’Argo pressed his lips together and looked annoyed, but that only delayed eating by a couple of microts. Fobatts: either that tube stuff, or a unit of weight. Crichton was still learning the rules. All this time, and he was still figuring it out.

Aeryn finished first and stood. She had cut Crichton out of her field of view the whole time; now she turned around.

Maybe he shouldn’t speak up, but he did. “You know, those grits, they’re….” He ran out of ideas. “They’re practically homemade,” he muttered. Let her believe it got her closer to him. It was all the proximity he was going to get.

“They’re terrible,” she said quietly, and walked out, leaving a fully stained but food-free plate.

Crichton’s mind raced away for something else. “Pip, you didn’t say which part was for you.”

She straddled Aeryn’s chair and rested her chin on her hands over the back. “Aw. I wasn’t going to put that stuff out to share.”

“Okay. Chef’s prerogative.”

There was chatter. There was reminiscing. There were people finally together, and though there might be ghosts, nobody was crossing any streams tonight.


End file.
